Yesterday on my way up to Olive to see my wife's father, who is near the end of his life's journey, I read in the Tribune of the death of Wm O'Connor.1 I was news I had been expecting for some time, yet it was a stunning blow for all that I know how keenly you must feel it, & you have loc.01167.002_large.jpg my deepest sympathy. No words come to my pen adequate to express the sense of the loss we have we suffered in the death of that chivalrous & eloquent soul. How strange that his life has all passed, that I shall see or hear him no more.
And it is sad to me to think that he has left behind him no work or book that at all expresses the measure of his great powers. What loc.01167.003_large.jpg a gift of speech that man had! If you can tell me anything about his last days I shall be very glad to hear it. Also where he is buried.
I am pretty well, & have been immersed in farm work for the past six weeks. We have rented our house to a New York man for 5 months. Julian2 & I live in the old house with a man who works for me, & Ursula3 boards in Po'Keepsie. I hope this great heat for loc.01167.004_large.jpg the past few days has not prostrated you. Tell Harry Trauble 4 to write to me.
The wave of orchard bloom has just passed over us & the world has been very lovely. Drop me a line my dear friend if you are able to do so.
With the old love John BurroughsCorrespondent:
The naturalist John Burroughs
(1837–1921) met Whitman on the streets of Washington, D.C., in 1864. After
returning to Brooklyn in 1864, Whitman commenced what was to become a decades-long
correspondence with Burroughs. Burroughs was magnetically drawn to Whitman.
However, the correspondence between the two men is, as Burroughs acknowledged,
curiously "matter-of-fact." Burroughs would write several books involving or
devoted to Whitman's work: Notes on Walt Whitman, as Poet and
Person (1867), Birds and Poets (1877), Whitman, A Study (1896), and Accepting
the Universe (1924). For more on Whitman's relationship with Burroughs,
see Carmine Sarracino, "Burroughs, John [1837–1921] and Ursula [1836–1917]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and
Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998).